


quiet my storm and let me rest

by abrightgrayworld



Category: Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, but i really love these 3 and their friendship holy cow, this was kind of spur of the moment when i was supposed to be writing the other spiderman fic i had, whoops again?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-24
Updated: 2017-08-24
Packaged: 2018-12-19 09:26:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11894811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abrightgrayworld/pseuds/abrightgrayworld
Summary: It's the anniversary of Uncle Ben's death, and Peter is hurting.Luckily, he has Ned and MJ for best friends.





	quiet my storm and let me rest

Peter can literally _feel_ the eyes boring into his back.

It hasn’t even been ten minutes since his first class started, but he can still feel the weight and tension in the air around him. He grits his teeth and stares straight ahead at the board, trying to listen to his teacher and ignore everything else.

Ms. Patel catches his eye and her face melts into a weird half-wince, half-smile. Peter’s face burns. He drops his eyes to his notebook, staring at the half-hearted scribble of notes that he’s been taking. He forces himself not to react any other way.

When class ends, his teacher pulls him aside. “Peter,” she says, eyes warm and sad. “You should take the rest of the day off. We can get your homework to you tomorrow or the day after if you’re not feeling well enough to come in.”

Peter forces a smile onto his face, pushing down his sudden irritation. She’s just trying to help. “Thank you, Ms. Patel, but I’m fine. I’d really just like to have a normal day.” His voice cracks a little on normal, and she looks unconvinced. Still, she lets him go with a soft pat on the shoulder that, admittedly, makes the lump in his throat that’s been there all week grow even bigger.

“Whatever you need. If you need to talk, my door is always open,” she says, and Peter nods.

As he heads down the hall to chemistry, Ned appears from another hallway and falls into step beside him.

“You’ll never believe this,” he whispers, bouncing a little. “Betty Brant talked to me for a solid two minutes in homeroom. And she was blushing! Do you think she knows I like her? Do you think she likes _me_?”

Peter has never been more grateful in his life that Ned Leeds is his best friend. He latches onto the semblance of normalcy that Ned knows he needs and hisses, “Dude, that’s amazing! I bet she does! You have to ask her out!”

“I can’t! What if I was imagining it? What if she was just talking to me as a friend and my stupid guy-brain thinks that she’s into me just because she had one conversation with me? I don’t want to be one of those guys, dude!” Ned looks panicked.

Beside them, there’s a snort, and Peter and Ned jump. They look over to see MJ pacing alongside them, hair wild as always, nose in _One Hundred Years of Solitude_. She’s been doing that a lot ever since she became an official part of their friend group; she seems to find their surprise amusing.

“Trust me, Leeds,” MJ says, stepping expertly around a student’s backpack without looking up from the page once. “She’s into you. She’s been into you the whole year. It’s a miracle you’re only noticing now. Although,” she adds, “It’s nice that you’re worried about that.” Ned looks pleased at the comment, and then his expression turns elated.

“She likes me, holy shit,” he whispers. Peter likes that he doesn’t doubt her words at all, just accepts them for the truth.

“Hey,” he says, hoping that the levity in his voice isn’t too obviously forced. “I never noticed that! Don’t you think I would know if someone liked my best friend?”

“Honestly, Parker, I think only you have Ned beat for most oblivious person in this school,” MJ scoffs. She pauses, eyeing Ned. “Except maybe Betty, because she still doesn’t know you like her. Ask her out, Leeds, and end her suffering.”

“Okay, okay, okay,” Ned nods, a dopey grin on his face. MJ nods curtly at him. As Peter follows Ned into class, she pins him with a brief but shrewd look that he returns blankly before heading down the hall to where Peter knows she spends her free periods, the empty stairwell near the English department.

Ned is vibrating with energy as they sit, blabbering about Betty’s hair, and suddenly, Peter feels bone-deep exhausted. His extended senses seem to shut down and everything around him slows. The voices around him become muted. He swallows hard, trying to dispel the persistent, heavy feeling in his throat and chest. His hands have started shaking, he notices distantly.

“Peter,” Ned whispers and Peter startles. Class has started—when did that happen? Ned has given up all pretense of not knowing what today is and is staring at him, worry in his eyes. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Peter wants to say, but he finds that he can’t speak. The pressure in his throat is almost too much to bear but he still can’t release it somehow.

When Peter doesn’t answer, Ned’s face settles into something resolute. “Go outside, Peter. I’ll cover for you.”

Peter doubts that Ned really has to; his teacher will probably already know the reason for his escape. Still, he nods and leaves, hearing Ned muttering behind him and feeling other students’ eyes again on his back.

The hallway is mostly quiet, with just the faint whine of the bright fluorescent lights echoing. It inexplicably reminds Peter of a hospital, and he shivers, shoulders hunching.

“Come on, Peter.” Ned is beside him again. He puts an arm around Peter and gently starts to steer him towards the end of the corridor. Peter doesn’t register where they’re going until he sees a curly-haired figure sat against a wall on a stairwell landing.

MJ looks up when the door to the stairwell opens. She doesn’t look surprised to see them. Of course she doesn’t.

Ned guides Peter to sit next to her, and then takes the seat next to him. He shifts as close to Peter as he can and shockingly, so does MJ, until they’re in a Ned-Peter-MJ sandwich, his best friends clustered around him comfortingly. They sit silently under the hum and buzz of the lights, the light but heavy air smelling of must.

Peter feels something in his throat loosen when he feels their shoulders touch his, their warmth starting to chase away the chill he’s felt all day. Still, he can’t let of the mounting tension in his body. It's getting harder to breathe freely. He draws his knees to his chest and rests his head on Ned’s shoulder, trying to soak in the comfort of the moment.

After a few long minutes of silence, MJ shifts, reaching into her backpack and pulling out a book. She sets her current one to the side and opens it to the first page. Peter watches her trace the page, watches her face soften into something sad and wistful, expressions he’s almost never seen her wear before.

“It was a dark and stormy night,” she reads, and Peter’s heart all but stops at the words.

 _Oh my god._  This is—how on earth did she know? Oh, _MJ._

“In her attic bedroom Margaret Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on the foot of her bed and watched the trees tossing in the frenzied lashing of the wind.”

MJ’s voice is lilting when she reads, not as brash and blunt as her usual tone. The words sound familiar and worn, as if this is a story she’s read a million times, as if this story is an old friend she loves to visit and reminisce with.

She sounds like Ben did when he used to read _A Wrinkle in Time_ to Peter.

The dam breaks.

Peter’s eyes fill and he chokes on a breath. He breaks into ugly sobs against Ned’s shoulder, screwing his eyes tight against the torrent of tears and snot running down his face. Ned hugs him close and rubs his back, and MJ shifts even closer and takes his hand. He clenches her hand and Ned’s shirt like they’re lifelines and claws himself out of the darkness, MJ’s calm, clear voice and her and Ned’s presence carrying him back to harbour from the depths of his sea of grief.

The grief doesn’t let him go for a long, long time. He doesn’t think he cried this hard even when Ben died. It’s like every ounce of sorrow he’s ever felt since that day two years ago, every moment he spends at night thinking about ways he could have saved Ben and hating himself for not being able to, every stab of self-loathing he feels when May’s face shutters at a particularly strong memory of Ben, is pouring out into the light after months and months of festering in the darkest corners of his heart.

Everyone always expects the hardest part of grief to hit right after something bad happens. No one ever talks about how it can amplify and consume, how time doesn’t always help but hurts and burns and shreds you into pieces with the constant reminder of possibility, of _what if what if what if._

Eventually, Peter quiets, still hiccuping and heaving for air. Ned’s shoulder and the left side of his shirt are soaked, and the place where he’d grabbed onto is ripped from his super strength. When he looks, MJ’s hand is almost white from how hard he’d been grabbing it. Peter relaxes his grip and reluctantly moves to sit back from them both, but they don’t let him.

“It’s okay, dude,” Ned says softly, his hand still rubbing circles on Peter’s back. MJ hums as she starts reading the next sentence, her thumb tracing his hand reassuringly. There’s so much support coming from them that Peter almost breaks down again. But he feels lighter and stronger than he’s felt in a long, _long_ time.

“Thank you,” he whispers.

“No problem, Peter,” Ned says, sending him a smile.

MJ glances at Peter too, pausing in her words. Her dark eyes meet his. She looks breathtaking, messy flyaway strands forming a halo around her head, the dim, flickering, lights of the stairwell somehow illuminating her face where they usually make people look pallid. If Peter weren’t so tired right now, he thinks absently, he’s pretty sure he would be blushing.

“You don’t ever have to thank us, dweeb,” she says. “We’re here, always.” Ned nods, tightening his hug around Peter.

Peter tries for a smile and finds it comes more naturally than it did earlier today. He ducks his head and then looks back at MJ.

"How did you know?" he asks.

She shrugs. "Remember how we worked on our English project in the library together last month? I noticed you zoning out and staring at this book with this weird, sad look on your face. I made an educated guess." She shrugs again, looking away. "It's one of my favourite books, too. My mom read it to me all the time when I was little and now every time she's deployed and I miss her, I read it to make myself feel better."

Ned gives a little "aww" and MJ glares at him, though her lips quirk a little. Peter shakes his head a little, smile getting slightly wider; just like earlier with Ned today, he can't believe how lucky he is to have a best friend like her.

“Would it be okay—could you start that from the beginning?" he asks shyly. "It’s been—it’s been a really long time since I’ve heard it read out loud. I’d like to listen to it again properly.”

In response, MJ flips back to the first page.

“It was a dark and stormy night…”

And so, finding peace for the first time on the anniversary of his uncle’s death, Peter listens to the achingly familiar words come to life under MJ’s careful reading. He leans into Ned, closes his eyes, and breathes. 

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this when I was trying to write for my other fic, which will become a multi-chapter, I think! Sorry for the wait on that!
> 
> Keep in mind that I haven't actually read any of the comics, so my thoughts about Uncle Ben are just headcanons. I headcanon that he loved reading and he and Peter would read to each other all the time, and that this was one of their favourite books. 
> 
> Also, I'm not quite sure about timelines with Peter becoming Spiderman and Uncle Ben's death in the Marvel universe, so I hope my ideas make sense!
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this little sad thing I wrote! I know I loved writing it. <3 Comments and kudos would be super appreciated!!


End file.
